Saint Louis Art Museum Courtesy of Saint Louis Art Museum, Funds given by the St. Louis Friends of Photography, Accession Number: 431:2002
Children were particularly inviting subjects for 19th-century artists since they were thought to embody innocence and a humanity untainted by social pressures. That message is reinforced in this photograph by the girls' unaffected demeanors. Constant Famin was one of the leading practitioners of the Barbizon school of photography, a movement that featured country life from around Fontainebleau, near Paris. Such photographs of uninhibited rural children were intended primarily for an urban audience.
